Breukelen Residents Off The Hook (Almost) in Community Service Dispute

By Charles Rogers

Some tenants at the Breukelen Houses project were especially pleased when it was announced last week that a law that would require some of them to perform community service or face eviction had been temporarily tabled.

The controversial directive would require some tenants to do community service for at least eight hours a month as a condition of their lease. The New York City Housing Authority Resident lease Agreement states that "the tenant shall comply...with the landlord’s policy for administration of community service and economic self-sufficiency activities required of public housing residents...Each adult non-exempt member of a tenant’s household must perform eight hours of community service per month or participate in an economic self-sufficiency program for eight hours per month."

According to Breukelen Houses resident and activist Wendy McLarin, however, Rep. Charles Rangel has sponsored an amendment to the HUD’»s fiscal spending bill for 2002 that forbids HUD from spending any federal money to enforce the mandate. Sources say Rangel will sponsor another bill within the next year that would eliminate the mandate.

Earlier this year, the Council Presidents of the City of New York Resident Advisory Board, which represents 700,000-plus families in the Housing Authority projects, including those at Breukelen, recommended the repeal of the requirement, noting that it is "insulting and inconsistent with America’s basic tenants of governance," The panel also said it should be noteworthy that the mandate defined community service as a voluntary function, noting "our homes will be forfeit if we don’t comply. In what way is that voluntary? To us it feels like blackmail!"